New Home Communities | Home decor trends may come and go, but certain fads … well, let’s just say we’re really, really glad they’re gone. In fact, we can’t imagine how they ever became a thing in the first place. For a horrifying walk down memory lane, through some of the worst home-decor trends of all time, check out these bad fads:
1. Plastic furniture covers
Designed to prevent food, drink or dirt from adhering to fancy upholstery, those thick layers of clear vinyl instead adhered to you—or at least to any exposed skin (don’t even think about sitting on that plastic-wrapped arm chair on a hot day). Plus, let’s be frank: Saran-wrapping your furniture is not a great look. It screams that you’ve got neatnik issues—and that you care more about your furniture than making guests comfortable.
2. Popcorn ceilings
We understand the desire to add some pizzazz to boring old floors or walls. But ceilings? How often do people look at ceilings, anyway? Plus, textured ceilings from the ’70s and ’80s—usually called popcorn or acoustic ceilings—can absorb odors and discolor easily, so you’ve just made your home smellier and dingier to boot.
3. Wall-to-wall shag carpet
Soft wall-to-wall carpet with a short pile can boost a room’s warmth—and it’s more affordable than wood flooring—but laying down that long-tufted textile known as “shag” carpeting is a trend we don’t expect to return. For one, it’s hard to clean shag carpet, since the long pile can get caught in the vacuum cleaner’s brushroll. Two, while it looks interesting, it doesn’t feel too great under your feet. It kinda feels like you’re walking on yarn. Because, well, you are.
4. U-shaped toilet rugs and covers
Long after shag carpet faded from homes whose owners had a clue, plush U-shaped rugs started hugging the bases of countless toilets across America (and, oh yeah, the same matching material covered toilet seats, too). While probably intended to make cold, austere bathrooms appear more warm and fuzzy, they really made it seem very fussy, not to mention unclean—trapping moisture, bacteria, and all the other lovely things that accumulate on your bathroom floor.
5. Indoor fire pits
We’ll admit they possess some 1970s grooviness, but gas fire pits as a living room focal point are best left in the past. It seems far too easy for the clumsy or cocktailed to stumble into them—to say nothing of little kids and happy dogs with long tails. And we now know that fumes from indoor gas flames can emit un-groovy amounts of nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide and formaldehyde. It’s kinda like turning your home into one huge cigarette.
6. Mix and match wallpaper
In the ’80s, one wallpaper design rarely seemed to be enough. No, people combined different but coordinating wallpaper in one room—say, a large pattern on the top half of a wall, with a coordinating small-scale pattern on the bottom (usually separated by a chair rail—whatever happened to those?). Or, a wallpaper border would encircle the area where the walls met the ceiling. While probably intended to give rooms visual dimension, they only succeeded in giving people a headache.
7. Water beds
Introduced in the swinging ’70s, waterbeds seemed oh-so-sexy at the time—Hugh Hefner famously had one at the Playboy Mansion. But by the ’90s those singles from the “Three’s Company” era had became middle-aged marrieds with aching backs, and those squishy beds seemed skeevy instead of sexy. A 2004 study linking waterbeds with male infertility dealt the death blow to their allure.
8. Fabric overload
Perhaps in reaction to the more masculine ’70s look, ’80s interiors went full-throttle feminine, with floral prints and copious fabric in every corner of a room—think curtains that spilled onto the floor (topped by valances, of course), ruffled skirts on every piece of furniture, and tablecloths on side tables. It’s as if some conservative group convinced decorators that exposed furniture legs were indecent.
9. Hanging plants
Unless you’re really into the jungle look, suspending houseplants from your ceiling doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Most plants prefer to grow up, not down; and it’s a total pain in the neck to water them. Why go through the trouble when greenery looks just as lovely in a pot atop a table or shelf?
10. Magic Eye optical illusion prints
Remember the scene from the Gen X movie “Mallrats” where they’re staring and staring and staring at a framed picture of a supposed schooner … only it just looks like a bunch of squiggles? Well, those were actually a thing people put on the walls of their homes, driving their guests bonkers. These things belong only in malls. Or how about nowhere? - Realtor
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